The Golden Sword (25 page)

“I have nothing to offer you. Even my life is uncertain.”

I touched him. “You, have all that I need. Chayin said you would kill me. I came here, knowing that, preferring death at your hands to life with another,” I pleaded.

Amusement tugged at the corners of his mouth, danced in its old place deep in his eyes. “I might still kill you. Women have been couched to death before.” And then it left him, and his voice turned toneless. “I thought I would, should I ever have the chance.” His hand traced the curve of my neck, finding there the thick gold links of the uritheria medallion and drawing them tight about my throat.

“What of Chayin? Where does he stand with you? I need his good will.”

“He brought me to you and left me in your hands, thinking you would harm me. He loves you, not me.”

“I know that,” said Sereth darkly, releasing me. “Let us join him.” He pushed me gently down the corridor.

I was content to walk beside him.

“It is good to look upon you.”

“Chayin said you keep no women about you,” I replied, as we entered a passage; free of torches, where the ancient ceiling lights still functioned.

He shrugged. “I have been known to belt on an appropriate chald and venture into Well Oppiri when my need is strong enough. For a while I took an occasional captive, but the quality of captives is not as high as when we first hunted them. Near the lake there are coin girls among the camp followers, for what they are worth. I developed higher tastes in Arlet than an outlaw’s life can sustain.” He tossed his head, shaking the hair from his eyes. He wore it longer now, almost upon his shoulders. His hand reached under my cloak, and his questing fingers found the fading ridges of scars there.

“Where did you get these?” he asked.

“I too, have led a different life from that to which I was born. I am no longer the soft and pampered Well-Keepress you knew. I have killed two men, and a tiask thrice my size, with my own hands. This chald is no gift. I am tiaskchan of Nemar.”

“I will keep in mind your fierceness,” he promised. “But you cannot be tiaskchan and outlaw both.”

“I will give it all up,” I said airily.

“Not quite yet,” he replied, turning into a corridor of some dark brown material that had actual doors, spaced along its length. Before one of them he stopped, and the door slid open of its own accord. Within, Chayin started to his feet, crouching there, frozen.

“Did you .. ? What did ... ? No. I see you did not,” said the cahndor of Nemar in faultless Silistran.

“Kill her?” Sereth laughed. “Not yet. Would I do such a thing without inviting you?” And he strode across the chamber and rummaged in a wooden chest in one corner.

I stared around me, at this strange and ghost-ridden chamber whose walls were ever changing color. The art of a long-dead age reached out to calm me. No windows broke the walls’ expanse. The floor was soft as tas-suede, resilient, tiered in what semed random sequence, except that the raised areas were different tones of that same neutral. Anachronistic against those walls stood Arletian wooden racks bristling with sword and shield and spear, helmet and armor and five-lashed stones, and even a number of large pelts. Sereth closed the wooden chest and turned to me.

Upon one loam-colored tier in the middle of the room had been dumped my saddle and Chayin’s. I found myself standing over them with no memory of crossing the distance from the door. The helsar reached out to me, demanding, rolling softly. My face, shoulders, and arms slicked and flushed, as if I stood over some raging conflagration. In a way, I did. It took all my attention to back away from that blaze.

“What?” I said when I could, from where I found myself sitting upon the floor, Sereth standing over me. Behind him the light from the walls shifted softly. The ceiling was dark with a likeness of night clouds upon it. The room knew it was evening. I had no doubt that in the day one might look up and see the semblance of greening sky. Through the helsar I sensed its gladness to have within it once more eyes to rest upon its work. I pushed the room-consciousness away with a shiver. Did the ceiling count the days and nights, all those centuries when none had dwelt beneath it?

“Choose one!” Sereth repeated. “They are as exact as the best weaponsmith in Yardum-Or could make them. I have held them for this moment a long while.”

“And you still say you did not know I lived?” I wondered, taking the two parr-wrapped bundles from him.

“I did not know it,” he maintained.

“The truth of that being that you know not what ‘knowing’ feels like.” Chayin made my point for me in a wry voice as he came and knelt beside us.

I unwrapped the bundles, and laid upon the sand-toned floor two stra-hilted gol-knives. They were without ornamentation but for a small red gol-drop embedded in the butt of each hilt. I hefted them. They snuggled against one’s palm the same. They balanced in the fingers the same. Each was perfect, eloquently simple. I recollected how he had come by those two priceless gol-drops, in the gollands above Arlet. My eyes misted unaccountably. I took one and handed back the other.

“Tomorrow we will go together to my fitter and have sheaths made,” Sereth said. It is considered a bad omen to give a virgin weapon in sheath.

“First, that which is first, Sereth,” I declined. “I must take the helsar’s teaching. Even tomorrow might be too late, but I would spend this night with you both. It is very strong now, and I am weak. It might come to pass that I cannot shatter it.” I paused, not knowing what else to say.

“What is a helsar?” Sereth asked, his eyes narrowed into slits.

“If you cannot shatter it”—Chayin touched my arm—“might you not return the way you came?”

“If I cannot, and I lie there still breathing, upon the fourth day you might do whatever comes to you to arouse me.” I took Chayin’s dark hand in mine, and turned my head to meet Sereth’s anxious eyes.

“In these matters, take Chayin’s lead. As to what the helsar is, I am not sure. The fathers know, but they are not saying. You remember the cowled one?”

“How could I forget?”

“The name of that being is Raet, and his world, upon which I found my father, is called Mi’ysten. It is a beautiful and strange place, where natural laws and time itself combine differently. The Mi’ysten have great skills, but not so great as the fathers, who created all we know as time and space. I have heard it said by Mi’ystens that the helsar is drawn into being by the disturbance one causes when first learning to move between the planes, and the attendant rubbing together of the edges of different continuums. That does not explain where the pieces go when they shatter, or why. But it would explain how I came by it. It followed me back from there, one time when I went to see Estrazi—upon the wings of uris. I cannot do other than work my way through it, for in this place its very presence is a danger.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Sereth said, uneasy. “I am not anxious to cross paths with this Raet again. Although some would say I have little to lose, I would retain what there is.” He leaned back against the loam-colored dais, crossing his arms over his chest, slid down on his spine.

“Only what I have asked you: watch over me while I deal with it. It is my problem.”

“Who is Raet?” asked Chayin.

I sighed, and shook my head. “It is a long tale. You and Sereth each hold a part of the puzzle. Compare them. I think you will find that Raet and Tar-Kesa are one.”

Sereth put his hands over his ears.

“Enough! I am a simple man. I want no contest with gods!” He looked at me, his eyes imploring me to tell him I did not bring Raet’s influence again upon him. I could not. There was a long silence, broken only by Chayin digging at the flooring with his knife. It remained unmarred by his attack.

“If you are afraid,” I offered, in a whisper, “I will leave here, this moment.”

“Were I not afraid, I would be a greater fool than I am,” he said. “Now that I have you back, I am not letting you out of my sight.” And he got to his feet. “I am hungry. Here on Opir, one must go to the kettle. Let us do so.” He held out his hand to me.

As we walked down the hall, he questioned Chayin about what had occurred at Frullo jer, and the race results came out. Sereth was suitably impressed by my victory, and I promised to show him Guanden after we ate. Also did we relate to the Ebvrasea what had passed between Nemar and Menetph and M’ksakka. When he heard what Chayin had said to the M’ksakkans, Sereth’s laughter rang through the corridors. When he related our encounter with the Menetphers upon our stolen threx, I, too, felt the humor of the situation. When finally we turned into the kettle chamber, Chayin was just describing to Sereth how he had killed Aknet and become cahndor of Menetph, in the process bilking Celendra out of her considerable heritage. Sereth collapsed onto a bench, holding his middle. Tears of laughter ran down his cheek. My own sides hurt, and I was sure my face would crack from the grin upon it.

“Oh, I would have been there to see her face,” Sereth chortled.

“I would wager if you had seen it, you would also have seen M’ksakkan faces,” I projected.

“You seem to have done most of that worth doing without me,” Sereth objected, wiping his eyes.

“There is still Astria and Celendra,” Chayin reminded him. “And, in truth, M’ksakka.”

“And Estri to help us. We can reinstall her, perhaps. Would you like us to avenge you upon the killer of your uncle and usurper of your Well couch?” Sereth offered gallantly. I was glad the room was empty. As I walked over to the huge kettle bubbling on the sunken mid-room hearth, I wondered for what purpose the shallow pit had been intended.

“I think we would be acting in accord with the law within, to do such a thing.”

I filled three bowls with a huge iron ladle and took them to a plank table. The walls here were dark green, and the floor paler archite. When we went to sit down, the light above us brightened perceptibly. I shivered. “But I would not be reinstalled in Astria, to await whomever Estrazi sees fit to send me. I will go, but not for Astria. That which has been lost, cannot, in this world, be regained.” Only after did I realize I had quoted Carth, who was in service to the dharen. Chayin knew; his eyes sought mine.

I was surprised at what I saw there, though I should not have been. The time had come to uphold him, and reality was less painful than his preconceptions of it. He seemed released, calmly attendant upon the moment at hand. And his calm sprang from his foreknowledge, a taste of which set me back, cowering.

Sereth was relating the story of a narrow escape he had had when picking up the knives he contracted in Yardum-Or.

“If you keep roaming the cities in dead men’s chalds, Sereth, one of these times you will not return,” said Chayin.

“If such were not my practice, you would not be here to chide me about it,” Sereth replied, something in his manner reminding me of his bearing before his men in Arlet’s hostel. I felt lonely, uncomfortable. Love between men is something that excludes a woman as nothing else can. I tried to determine what had gone into the making of the brown glop in the bowl. I could not, but I would have laid money that such food had not been cooked by a woman. I regarded them from under my hair. The two of them looked like death dealers before whom Raet might rightly falter. A part of me took a great joy in that sight. It wanted no assignations, yet it did not disdain such tools. Not Estrazi’s will, or Raet’s, or Sereth’s will would I do, henceforth, but my own. I tossed my head and made a satisfied sound. I sat a little straighter, shoulders back, breasts out.

“What?” asked Sereth, handing me a bladder he brought to table.

I saw clear and real, obscuring Sereth’s face close to mine, that seven-cornered room. Not truly seven-cornered, I noticed without surprise, but with
seven corners.
Portions of seven different rooms, coming together to share a space in the middle. Each of the gold-glowing men stood in his own alcove; behind each was a window, and the countryside framed there in each window was too diverse to be any one place upon Silistra. This was Silistra: I saw a snowy peak, a glistening lake in warm sun, rolling field, deep forest. The seven men looked across the jumping flicker of the central space at each other. Under the flicker a certain symbol danced, actually seven symbols in seven rooms occupying the same space-time congruently. I went to look closer, thinking they could not see me. One leaned forward, his eyes unsurprised. Ice. Miles deep within, a glowing redness took note of my presence.

Then I saw Sereth. I leaned against him, not hearing, a time before I could think. Chayin’s breath was upon my cheek, his fingers at my wrists.

“Did you see?” I asked him. His face swam before me.

“No, but I knew what it was. I think you cannot wait any longer. If you do not go to it, it will surely come to you.”

“You are right,” I admitted, clearing the hair from my face. I stood up. “Though I would not do it now, I will be just as reluctant tomorrow.” Sereth, his face tight, picked up our bowls and deposited them in a barrel of water, wordless.

“Do you have your uris pouch, Chayin?” I asked him as we retraced our steps to Sereth’s chamber.

“Do you think it wise to use it now?” he objected, but handed it to me. I unstopped it and touched my tongue briefly to the liquid within.

“There is no wisdom,” I answered him, “only more or less successful overlays upon what is real.” I handed Sereth the uris pouch. He shook his head in refusal.

“Then what do you seek in the helsar, if not wisdom?” Chayin demanded as the door to Sereth’s chamber slid aside to admit us.

“Power, that I might defend myself against Raet. Weapons, if any be there. Tricks of a new trade whose name I do not know, and whose purpose I can but dimly sense.” I went and took one large brist pelt from Sereth’s rack and spread it upon the floor. Then I stripped off my boot and breech and band and piled them neatly in a corner. Sereth leaned against the dais upon which the helsar rested in my saddlepack, oblivious of it. Chayin paced back and forth the length of the chamber.

I took the Shaper’s cloak and spread it over the brist pelt, that I might slide under it. Though the room was warm, it was not warm enough to chase the chills from my flesh. Where I went, flesh could not yet follow me, but must rest in icy stasis; I would need both coverings. I fussed with my makeshift couch, smoothing wrinkles and evening corners, until I could put the moment off no longer. I went and kissed Sereth where he rested against the dais. His body was stiff against me.